The New Apple TV: A Step Up in Design and User Experience

The new Apple TV is a significant upgrade from its predecessors, with a sleek design that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional. One of the most notable features of the remote control is the introduction of a glass trackpad at the top, which provides an incredibly smooth and accurate way to navigate through menus and apps. This feature is a major improvement over the previous remotes, making it easier to use than ever before. The remote also includes a menu play/pause button, volume controls, and a dedicated Siri button, allowing users to quickly access their favorite entertainment options.

The trackpad feels great in the hand, comfortable to hold, and easily recharges via a lightning cable that comes bundled with the device or can be used with previous Apple devices. The remote's design is also ergonomic, making it easy to grip and maneuver for extended periods. However, one of the main drawbacks of the new Siri remote is its limitations in terms of app availability on the TV OS platform. As developers optimize and update their apps to support TV OS, there isn't a vast array of games or entertainment options available at launch. This means that users may find themselves missing some of their favorite titles from their iPhone or iPad.

On a more positive note, Siri has finally been added to Apple TV, bringing a level of convenience to users. Pressing and holding the microphone button on the remote brings up Siri, allowing users to ask for specific actions like launching an app, playing a movie, or finding films with specific actors. This feature is particularly useful for quick access to content, as it can save time compared to navigating through individual apps. For example, asking Siri "play Edge of Tomorrow" will begin playing the film instantly.

However, Siri's functionality still feels somewhat limited, and users may find themselves getting frustrated with its limitations. The system often tries to push users towards purchasing content from the iTunes Store, which can feel restrictive for some users. Nevertheless, Siri remains a convenient feature that enhances the overall user experience of the new Apple TV.

The multitasking feature is another notable addition to the new Apple TV. Activating it via a double press of the home button on the remote allows users to quickly switch between recently opened apps, similar to the iPhone or iPad experience. This feature also includes the ability to swipe up and close apps down, providing an intuitive way to manage multiple tasks at once. The multitasking feature is fast and responsive, making it easy to navigate through various entertainment options.

The new Apple TV's hardware has been improved significantly, with faster performance and better display capabilities compared to previous models. However, the lack of 4K support and relatively long loading times between opening apps and movies are notable drawbacks. Despite these limitations, the device still feels like a significant step up in terms of design and user experience.

Overall, the new Apple TV is a solid upgrade for users who already own an Apple TV or are looking to invest in a high-quality streaming device. While it may not revolutionize the smart TV market with its 4K capabilities and app selection, it remains one of the most enjoyable devices to use in this category. For those on the fence about upgrading, it's worth considering the convenience and design improvements offered by the new Apple TV.

In terms of pricing, the 32 GB model costs £129, which is slightly lower than previous models. This makes it a more accessible option for users who are looking to upgrade their current device or enter the smart TV market for the first time. However, compared to other smart TVs and streaming devices on the market, such as those from Roku, Nvidia Shield, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Xbox One, and PS4, the Apple TV may not stand out in terms of value.

Ultimately, whether or not the new Apple TV is worth investing in depends on individual needs and preferences. Users who already own an Apple TV or are looking to upgrade their current device will likely appreciate the improved design and user experience offered by the new model. For those considering purchasing a smart TV or streaming device for the first time, it's essential to weigh the pros and cons of each option before making a decision.

As with any major update, it's natural to wonder if Apple is setting its sights on the future of TVs. While the new Apple TV has certainly improved upon previous models in terms of design and user experience, it still feels somewhat limited compared to other smart TVs and streaming devices on the market. Nevertheless, the device remains a solid choice for users who prioritize convenience, design, and ease of use.

In conclusion, the new Apple TV offers significant improvements over its predecessors, including a sleek remote control with a glass trackpad, multitasking feature, and Siri integration. However, it also has its drawbacks, such as limited app availability on TV OS and slower 4K support compared to other devices on the market. As users consider upgrading their current device or entering the smart TV market for the first time, it's essential to weigh these pros and cons before making a decision.

The Apple TV is available now, offering users a solid choice for those seeking convenience, design, and ease of use in a streaming device. While it may not revolutionize the smart TV market with its 4K capabilities and app selection, it remains one of the most enjoyable devices to use in this category.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso what's new with the new Apple TV 4th gen well on paper there's a lot to talk about but in reality it doesn't really feel all that much different to the last Apple TV first of all it's had a big bump in the specs we go from an old A5 processor to a much newer if not quite Cutting Edge A8 chip that's the same one that's in the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus the ram has also been quadrupled to 2 gb which helps with a new multitasking feature the new Apple TV also now supports 1080p playback at 60 frames per second that's up from 30 FPS on all the models which will be handy for YouTube content and games but it does seem odd and it's a bit of a shame that there's absolutely no 4K support of any kind especially as other devices like the Nvidia shield and Roku 4 support 4K 60 most of us won't really care about 4K that much right now but supporting it would certainly have future prooved the Apple TV 4 gen for a bit longer in terms of the design the new Apple TV is a lot heavier and nearly twice as tall as the third gen model there's not a lot new in terms of connections either it has the same power port which means it's a straight swap if you have the old one you can just plug in uh straight into the same power cable it also has the same full size HDMI and ethernet ports but what they have done is they swapped the micro USB for a fancy new USB type-c which is great for future devices but there's still no standard USB 3 or even a card reader so without USB uh type-c adapters the Apple TV still a little sparse in terms of inputs strangely we've also lost the optical audio port which was useful for connecting older sound systems which we do have on the older third gen model so just looking at it there's not a great deal to get excited about but once you turn it on you'll see the most important new feature TV OS running a whole new operating system the new Apple TV uses tvos rather than the old Apple TV 6.1 software that's not particularly interesting in itself but along with being much smoother faster and more responsive to use it is a lot nicer it now supports Siri and much more importantly an app store here in the UK we have the usual iTunes Netflix and Ted but not a great deal else actually unless you're a big fan of the NHL or WWE the good news that is that it has been confirmed that I player and Sky Now TV will be coming soon but without Amazon Prime ITV Player 4od Sky Go Plex or Pandora in the UK or in the UK at least there's still not a lot to watch on the Apple TV unless you already have a huge collection of iTunes videos and movies or willing to rent or buy them regularly from the store to be fair though this isn't really that different than previous Apple TVs so if you've been using those then you'll know what you're going to get what is new and most exciting is the apps the games you can finally play crossy Road on your big TV it even supports multiplayer if you prefer racing games Asel 8 looks great and runs really well as well so how do you control these apps and games well with the new Siri remote controller for racing games you can use it a bit like a Wii remote steering using the built-in gyroscope and accelerometer for simpler games or to navigate around menus you simply move your finger over the new glass trackpad at the top of the remote it's incredibly nice to use it's fast it's accurate and it's a much better way of controlling the Apple TV than the uh previous remotes as well as having a menu play por and volume buttons the remote also has a dedicated button to activate Siri overall though the remote is a nice upgrade the trackpad feels great it's comfortable to hold and is easily recharged using a lightning cable which is bundled in the box or you could use the same one you used to uh charge anything from the iPhone 5 onwards upwards or recent iPads going back to the App Store the main problem is it's not the same app store as you get on your iPhone or your iPad developers have to optimize and update their apps to support TV OS which the Apple TV runs and so at launch there is isn't really a great deal of interesting games to play it will of course grow and get better with time but it's worth remembering that for now the vast majority of apps you may be used to using on your iPhone or your iPad simply aren't available for the TV oos on a more positive note Siri has finally been added to Apple TV pressing and holding the microphone button on the remote brings up Siri where you can ask it to launch an app or a game play a movie find films uh with specific actors and even skip ahead or rewind movies and videos by 30 seconds or a few minutes for example I find it most useful to ask Siri to start playing something like Siri play Edge of Tomorrow and a few seconds later it would begin playing the film so I found this a lot quicker than having to go into my iTunes app and then go into purchase Tab and then playing it that way it did save quite a few seconds I would say while asking series show me Action films will bring up links to relevant movies on Netflix or iTunes most of the time it will send you just straight to iTunes where you can have options to rent or buy the content this is largely down to the limited variety of other entertainment apps and it always feels like siries trying to get me to buy something from the iTunes Store it just feels like everything is behind a bit of a price wall generally though Siri is a nice addition you can ask it for the time for sports scores as you'd expect but really it's just a convenient way of more quickly accessing content although I would say it still doesn't feel fully fleshed out and too often it will only work in the way you'd expect in sort of a contextual way when you're within certain apps like YouTube or Netflix the new multitasking feature also helps you to navigate around a double press of the home button on the Siri remote activates the mode which lets you swipe between apps you've recently had open in the same way as you would on your iPhone or your iPad you can even swipe up to close apps down it is actually pretty handy to be able to quickly jump between games apps and movies uh and thanks to the improved Hardware it's pretty quick as well so the new Apple TV has better Hardware it has a more intuitive user interface it has apps multitasking the new seral remote and so there's quite a lot of new stuff with the fourth gen Apple TV yet it doesn't really feel that much different to the older models Apple has marketed this as the future of TV but it doesn't really feel that way there's so many Smart TV boxes on the market from the Roku 4 Nvidia shield Amazon Fire TV chomecast and of course even games consoles like the Xbox One and PS4 it's kind of difficult to see how the Apple TV really stands out there the lack of 4K support the Fairly long loading times between opening apps and movies don't really help either so for me the bottom line is the new Apple TV while being the nicest and easiest to use Apple TV ever except for a fairly limited range of apps available in the new app store fundamentally it's the same as previous generations of Apple TVs far from being the future of TVs the 32 GB model costs £129 which is $149 and so I would say if you do regularly use an Apple TV already and are happy with the services it Prov divides I would highly recommend upgrading because it it really is a lot nicer to use if you are on the fence about it perhaps you don't own one yet you're not sure I'm not really sure it is worth the in investment especially if you already have either a smart TV a games console or even a chomecast so this has been my review of the latest fourth gen Apple TV do let me know what you think of it whether you think you'll be upgrading maybe you'll buy one in the comments below thank you very much for watching please do like and subscribe and I'll catch you again on the tech chap cheers guysso what's new with the new Apple TV 4th gen well on paper there's a lot to talk about but in reality it doesn't really feel all that much different to the last Apple TV first of all it's had a big bump in the specs we go from an old A5 processor to a much newer if not quite Cutting Edge A8 chip that's the same one that's in the iPhone 6 and the 6 plus the ram has also been quadrupled to 2 gb which helps with a new multitasking feature the new Apple TV also now supports 1080p playback at 60 frames per second that's up from 30 FPS on all the models which will be handy for YouTube content and games but it does seem odd and it's a bit of a shame that there's absolutely no 4K support of any kind especially as other devices like the Nvidia shield and Roku 4 support 4K 60 most of us won't really care about 4K that much right now but supporting it would certainly have future prooved the Apple TV 4 gen for a bit longer in terms of the design the new Apple TV is a lot heavier and nearly twice as tall as the third gen model there's not a lot new in terms of connections either it has the same power port which means it's a straight swap if you have the old one you can just plug in uh straight into the same power cable it also has the same full size HDMI and ethernet ports but what they have done is they swapped the micro USB for a fancy new USB type-c which is great for future devices but there's still no standard USB 3 or even a card reader so without USB uh type-c adapters the Apple TV still a little sparse in terms of inputs strangely we've also lost the optical audio port which was useful for connecting older sound systems which we do have on the older third gen model so just looking at it there's not a great deal to get excited about but once you turn it on you'll see the most important new feature TV OS running a whole new operating system the new Apple TV uses tvos rather than the old Apple TV 6.1 software that's not particularly interesting in itself but along with being much smoother faster and more responsive to use it is a lot nicer it now supports Siri and much more importantly an app store here in the UK we have the usual iTunes Netflix and Ted but not a great deal else actually unless you're a big fan of the NHL or WWE the good news that is that it has been confirmed that I player and Sky Now TV will be coming soon but without Amazon Prime ITV Player 4od Sky Go Plex or Pandora in the UK or in the UK at least there's still not a lot to watch on the Apple TV unless you already have a huge collection of iTunes videos and movies or willing to rent or buy them regularly from the store to be fair though this isn't really that different than previous Apple TVs so if you've been using those then you'll know what you're going to get what is new and most exciting is the apps the games you can finally play crossy Road on your big TV it even supports multiplayer if you prefer racing games Asel 8 looks great and runs really well as well so how do you control these apps and games well with the new Siri remote controller for racing games you can use it a bit like a Wii remote steering using the built-in gyroscope and accelerometer for simpler games or to navigate around menus you simply move your finger over the new glass trackpad at the top of the remote it's incredibly nice to use it's fast it's accurate and it's a much better way of controlling the Apple TV than the uh previous remotes as well as having a menu play por and volume buttons the remote also has a dedicated button to activate Siri overall though the remote is a nice upgrade the trackpad feels great it's comfortable to hold and is easily recharged using a lightning cable which is bundled in the box or you could use the same one you used to uh charge anything from the iPhone 5 onwards upwards or recent iPads going back to the App Store the main problem is it's not the same app store as you get on your iPhone or your iPad developers have to optimize and update their apps to support TV OS which the Apple TV runs and so at launch there is isn't really a great deal of interesting games to play it will of course grow and get better with time but it's worth remembering that for now the vast majority of apps you may be used to using on your iPhone or your iPad simply aren't available for the TV oos on a more positive note Siri has finally been added to Apple TV pressing and holding the microphone button on the remote brings up Siri where you can ask it to launch an app or a game play a movie find films uh with specific actors and even skip ahead or rewind movies and videos by 30 seconds or a few minutes for example I find it most useful to ask Siri to start playing something like Siri play Edge of Tomorrow and a few seconds later it would begin playing the film so I found this a lot quicker than having to go into my iTunes app and then go into purchase Tab and then playing it that way it did save quite a few seconds I would say while asking series show me Action films will bring up links to relevant movies on Netflix or iTunes most of the time it will send you just straight to iTunes where you can have options to rent or buy the content this is largely down to the limited variety of other entertainment apps and it always feels like siries trying to get me to buy something from the iTunes Store it just feels like everything is behind a bit of a price wall generally though Siri is a nice addition you can ask it for the time for sports scores as you'd expect but really it's just a convenient way of more quickly accessing content although I would say it still doesn't feel fully fleshed out and too often it will only work in the way you'd expect in sort of a contextual way when you're within certain apps like YouTube or Netflix the new multitasking feature also helps you to navigate around a double press of the home button on the Siri remote activates the mode which lets you swipe between apps you've recently had open in the same way as you would on your iPhone or your iPad you can even swipe up to close apps down it is actually pretty handy to be able to quickly jump between games apps and movies uh and thanks to the improved Hardware it's pretty quick as well so the new Apple TV has better Hardware it has a more intuitive user interface it has apps multitasking the new seral remote and so there's quite a lot of new stuff with the fourth gen Apple TV yet it doesn't really feel that much different to the older models Apple has marketed this as the future of TV but it doesn't really feel that way there's so many Smart TV boxes on the market from the Roku 4 Nvidia shield Amazon Fire TV chomecast and of course even games consoles like the Xbox One and PS4 it's kind of difficult to see how the Apple TV really stands out there the lack of 4K support the Fairly long loading times between opening apps and movies don't really help either so for me the bottom line is the new Apple TV while being the nicest and easiest to use Apple TV ever except for a fairly limited range of apps available in the new app store fundamentally it's the same as previous generations of Apple TVs far from being the future of TVs the 32 GB model costs £129 which is $149 and so I would say if you do regularly use an Apple TV already and are happy with the services it Prov divides I would highly recommend upgrading because it it really is a lot nicer to use if you are on the fence about it perhaps you don't own one yet you're not sure I'm not really sure it is worth the in investment especially if you already have either a smart TV a games console or even a chomecast so this has been my review of the latest fourth gen Apple TV do let me know what you think of it whether you think you'll be upgrading maybe you'll buy one in the comments below thank you very much for watching please do like and subscribe and I'll catch you again on the tech chap cheers guys\n"